Patty Bradley-Diehl

In case you haven’t heard, Drew Barrymore has been filming her new movie - Whip It! in Ypsilanti, Michigan. It turns out that both filming locations (a historic house on South Summit and the Wolverine Grill on Main Street) are buildings that my husband Richard painted back in 2001! And I am afraid that this close brush with fame has gone to his head. He’s all over town telling everyone about his new-found fame.

I am honored to receive a certificate of appreciation from the University of Michigan Council for Disability Concerns. Each year the Neubacher Award Committee recognizes UM-connected individuals or teams who have done an outstanding job in raising consciousness about disability issues. I was nominated by my colleague Terri Mellow for my work with the UM Web Accessibility Working Group to increase awareness of the importance of web accessibility in all UM website stakeholders, and to foster compliance to web-accessibility standards in all UM websites. We certainly have a long way to go here at UM, but we are making progress!

Twenty years ago today, this Michigan State alum became employed by the University of Michigan. These twenty years has gone by in the blink of an eye. I started as a Research Secretary II with the Monitoring the Future study at the Survey Research Center, which is part of the UM’s Institute for Social Research. I spent most of my first few years typing NCR forms and address labels on an IBM Selectric II typewriter - how I learned to type! I saw the first desktop computers installed and used them to hook up to a main frame called MTS and do data runs that I had to go to a neighboring building to pick up. I saw the first office software deployed with its ever changing word processing systems - WordStar, Final Word, TextEdit, Word Perfect and finally MS Word. I learned computer programming by writing Word Perfect macros. I then conquered MS Access and learned to design and use relational databases, export data to Word Perfect and merge forms and letters to hundreds of survey respondents.

I used a web browser (Mosaic) for the first time in the early nineties. I only wish I could remember the very first web page I looked at. I got hooked on the internet right away and took an old desktop computer home to use over my new dial-up internet connection. I spent weekends playing on a community website called The Globe where I met many new friends and got crushes on people I had never met. It was there that I learned my first bits of HTML so that I could make my messages pretty. I accumulated quite a collection of animated graphics. Ah, those were the days! I got a domain and made my first personal website sometime in the mid nineties.

But I digress. In my 14 years with MTF I was promoted from Research Secretary II to Research Assistant II, to Research Associate I, and finally to Senior Procedures Analyst. In the fall of 2000 I decided to turn my passion for making websites into a new career direction and enrolled in the Internet Professional Program at Washtenaw Community College. I spent two and a half years attending classes in the evening, reveling in everything I learned and applying for every web job at UM that came along. In March of 2002 I realized my goal of becoming a professional web developer at UM and was hired away from MTF by the School of Public Health to become their new Web Administrator. Thank you, Nancy Allee!

Now, six years later, I still love my job because I am immersed in “the web” every second of every day. I get to provide web services to our faculty, staff and students. I work with outstanding people - my colleagues here at SPH are a constant source of support and new ideas. But the best part of my job is when I get to work with people from other units on campus-wide initiatives. Earlier this week I sat in a meeting with several key players at UM - unit heads, a Vice Provost, the VP of Communications and a lawyer from the Office of the General Council - discussing the problem of inaccessible UM websites and how to solve it. I feel like I can make a difference.

So today, on the 20th anniversary of my hire date, I declare a new goal: To be promoted to Web Designer/Administrator Senior in the next two years.

When I think about our struggling economy and all the people out of work, I am not only thrilled to have a job, but to have a job that I am excited to come to 5 days a week. I wake up thinking about and looking forward to all that I can accomplish today.

The funny part is, even though I was only at MSU for 4 years 25 years ago and I’ve been at UM for the past 20, I still can’t root for the damn Wolverines. GO GREEN!

Martin Scorsese’s tribute to the Rolling Stones is by far the best concert film I have ever seen, and I have seen quite a few, especially of the Rolling Stones. I’ve never been big on concert films. To me you have to be there in person to really enjoy it. But that was before Martin Scorsese and IMAX theaters got involved.

It was a completely immersive experience. I started to clap after each song before I remembered I was in a theater. There were great clips of old (and a few new) interviews with Mick and Keith (and even Charlie and Woody) interspersed throughout the set. The show was filmed in the tiny Beacon theater in New York City and was actually a benefit concert for one of Bill Clinton’s causes. The set-list was heavy on Some Girls towards the beginning, but wound up being pretty typical of a Stones show, ending in a pulse-quickening succession of their hard rock hits from Sympanthy to Satisfaction. Keith sang You Got the Silver and Connection for his solo part, which was truly touching.

What made this movie better than any other concert film was the camera work and editing. (Incidentally, Mick seemed to be worried about “all the cameras” in the behind the scenes footage, yet the Stones have had many camera men on stage for years.) The footage was made almost entirely of amazing, gritty close-ups, and the end result somehow managed to match the intensity of the Stones live. All the musicians were on fire - having the best show of their lives - especially Mick.

The Rolling Stones are at the pinnacle of their career. They knew this movie would be their legacy. They - along with Scorsese - made it deserving of that title.

Today my freelance company Abbey Lane Web Solutions launched the newly designed La Societe des Quarante Hommes at Huit Chevaux website. “La Societe des Quarante Hommes at Huit Chevaux” is French for “The Society of 40 Men and 8 Horses,” a military organization formed in 1920 by American Legionnaires as an honor society. http://mi40-8.com/ is the Michigan (Grand du Michigan, rather) website for the organization.

I used the Drupal CMS and a custom CSS-based theme by Modern Web Services to bring their website into the modern era.